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Sunday, 20 January 2013

Obama’s ‘kill list’ critic found dead in New York City

Prominent American blogger and computer prodigy Aaron Swartz, who
spoke against US President Barack Obama’s “kill list” and cyber attacks
against Iran, has been found dead in New York.
Police found the body of the 26-year-old in his apartment in New York
City borough of Brooklyn on Friday, said a spokeswoman for the city’s
chief medical examiner. Brooklyn’s chief medical examiner ruled the
death a suicide by hanging, but no further detail is available about the
mysterious death.

Last year, Swartz openly criticized the US and
the Israeli regime for launching joint cyber attacks against Iran. The
blogger was also vocal in criticizing Obama’s so-called kill list and
other policies. Obama has been reportedly approving the names put on the
“kill lists” used in the targeted killing operations carried out by US
assassination drones.

Every week or so, more than 100 members of the
US national security team gather via secure video teleconference run by
the Pentagon and go over the biographies of suspects in Yemen, Somalia,
and Pakistan, and “nominate” those who should be targeted in the
attacks.

Obama is then provided with the identities of those put on the “kill
list” and signs off on every strike in Yemen and Somalia as well as the
risky strikes in Pakistan.

Swartz was also widely credited for
co-authoring the specifications for the Web feed format RSS 1.0 (Rich
Site Summary) which he worked on at age 14. RSS is designed to deliver
content from sites that change constantly, such as news pages, to
users.

Swartz was critical of monopoly of information by corporate cartels
and believed that information should be shared and available for the
benefit of society. “Information is power. But like all power, there are
those who want to keep it for themselves,” he wrote in an online
“manifesto” in 2008. Based on that belief, the computer prodigy founded
the nonprofit group DemandProgress.